The saying goes, everything is bigger in Texas — and homecoming mums are no exception.
When the UT San Antonio Institute of Texan Cultures (ITC) reopened in downtown San Antonio, it celebrated with a “homecoming” of its own. The museum’s first visiting exhibition, “MUMENTOUS®: The Upsizing of a Texas Tradition,” is a colorful, larger-than-life tribute to one of the state’s most creative traditions: the homecoming mum.
Building a Texas-sized welcome
To prepare for the museum’s new chapter downtown, ITC Exhibits Coordinator Cristina Winston and a team of student workers and staff created an 18-foot-tall homecoming mum: the centerpiece of the MUMENTOUS® exhibit.
This monumental mum isn’t just big. It’s museum big. The ITC’s “Team Mum” measures 7 feet wide and 18 feet long, and it took six months to plan and build. It has about 1,333 yards, or 4,000 feet, of ribbon along with millions of rhinestones and thousands of staples.
The ITC team used scaffolding at UT San Antonio’s Archives and Collections Building to construct the skirt, attaching entire spools of ribbon to plywood with industrial staples and hot glue.
“Team Mum” measures 7 feet wide and 18 feet long, and it took six months to plan and build.
“I spent two months planning, calculating, and trying to figure out how I was going to create this monumental mum — despite never having made one before,” Winston said. “The local mum community was incredibly generous with their knowledge. We knew breaking the world record wasn’t realistic, so instead, we set out to design the most elaborate Team Mum possible, one that reflected today’s modern styles, especially with intricate braiding.”
The ITC’s Team Mum celebrates the museum’s own history, featuring cultural symbols like a Chinese lion puppet, cowboy boots and a longhorn plushie with a balloon as a nod to the original Texas Folklife Festival logo.
It includes a love braid on the left, a dragon tail chain in the middle, a Mobius braid on the right, and an angel wing braid with rhinestone fringe. The finished creation arrived at the museum in two massive pieces — the crown and the skirt — to be assembled for the first time in the new gallery.
Heart behind the glitter
The MUMENTOUS® exhibition was originally developed by the Arlington Museum of Art and is supported by the Cultural Heritage Endowment.
The exhibit showcases photography and research by Amy J. Schultz, author of “MUMENTOUS: Original Photos and Mostly True Stories About Football, Glue Guns, Moms, and a Supersized High School Tradition That Was Born Deep in the Heart of Texas.”
Through her work, Schultz explores how homecoming mums have evolved from simple corsages in the early 1900s to today’s elaborate, expressive creations, sometimes featuring lights, stuffed animals, feather boas, neon, die-cuts and entire themes. Schultz’s photos and stories highlight the artistry, personal identity and community each mum represents.
The rise of the “Team Mum” in the 1990s marked a new phase in the tradition’s development, according to Schultz. The massive mums, like the Guinness World Record-holding 38-foot-tall mum created in 2023 by Louisville High School, north of Dallas, became a collective celebration of entire schools and teams rather than just individuals.
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“Team Mums are essentially today’s version of elaborate homecoming floats that many people will remember from back in their day,” Schultz said. “Whether an old school float or today’s team mum, teachers and students work for weeks and weeks to create it, learning lessons of project management, budgeting, teamwork, and problem solving.”
“When you see these giant mums, 99 times out of 100, it was made by a group of students who are learning valuable lessons while also having fun,” she added.
“Welding and carpentry students might construct the frames, fashion and floral classes handle design and fabrication, and marketing classes manage the fundraising or promotion.”
When team mums are finally hung at homecoming, the community can see the creativity, collaboration and school pride on full display, she said.
Local voices
Alongside the main exhibit is a “Homecoming Court” of local and regionally made mums that celebrate the diversity and artistry of Texas creators. These mums represent personal stories of family, school pride and handcrafted creativity.
A mother crafting a mum for her daughter’s senior year, siblings collaborating on their designs, professionals turning their passion into design careers — these are some of the stories exemplified in the mums. Collectively, they demonstrate how the homecoming mum remains a living, evolving form of self-expression — and a unique reflection of Texas culture.
Spirit of tradition
The multimedia exhibit MUMENTOUS® takes visitors deep into the heart of mum country.
Museumgoers will have the opportunity to meet the young people who wear them, parents who buy them, and entrepreneurs who influence the mums’ evolution. Most of all, they could discover that just like every ritual that stands the test of time, someone is keeping the tradition alive.
“Someone like mom,” Schultz said.
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MUMENTOUS® will be on display through Sunday, March 15, at the UT San Antonio Institute of Texan Cultures, 111 W. Houston St., at the corner of Camaron St., in downtown San Antonio.